February Light

Kathryn Jones

March 2, 2025

This early February morning,

it’s sunny in Texas, warm

after starting out chilly, and

breezy, with windchimes clanging.

Cardinals twitter and chase each other

in the live oak trees. The thermometer

climbs near eighty degrees, tricking me

into thinking winter is almost over.

Last night I saw Venus cozying up

to a crescent moon as Jupiter, Mercury,

Mars, Neptune, Saturn, and Uranus 

whirl on course to align by month’s end. 

Texas Bluebonnets’ star-shaped leaves

and the tips of slender daffodils poke up

out of the brown ground as if to ask, 

“Is it safe to come out yet?”

February is a month of hope before

March’s icy ides remind me that

winter is not done with us.

Today, though, I bask in sunlight and

tonight, moonlight and starlight, 

and their reassurance that there’s already

less darkness in the world and 

more light on the way.  

Kathryn Jones is a poet, journalist, and essayist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, and the Texas Observer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including TexasPoetryAssignment.com, Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose (Dos Gatos Press, 2023), Lone Star Poetry (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2023), The Senior Class: 100 Poets on Aging  (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024); and in her chapbook, An Orchid’s Guide to Life (Finishing Line Press, 2024), and the forthcoming collection The Solace of Wild Places (Lamar University Literary Press, 2025). She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016 and lives on a ranch near Glen Rose, Texas.